Boris Evelson

Vice President, Principal Analyst Serving Application Development & Delivery Professionals

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Boris serves the Application Development & Delivery role. He is a leading expert in business intelligence (BI) — a set of processes, methodologies, and technologies used to transform raw data into meaningful, useful, and action-oriented enterprise information. Boris delivers strategic guidance, helping enterprises define BI strategies, governance, and architectures and identify vendors and technologies that help them put information to use in business processes and end user experiences.

Boris' current research focuses on the practical and actionable best practices for building BI infrastructure and applications, such as BI business cases, architectural options, organizational structures, and vendor selection. Boris continues to explore emerging trends in next-generation BI, such as agile BI architecture and development approaches, in-memory analytics, advanced data visualization, convergence of structured data and unstructured content analytics, process-driven and operational BI, and many others.

Previous Work Experience

Boris has more than 30 years of experience with enterprise software and applications implementation, management consulting, and strategic advisory skills. Most recently, Boris was a managing partner at Textra, a boutique strategic advisory firm serving all IT constituents: users, vendors, and investors. Boris cofounded Textra after spending several years as a VP and a strategic technology advisor at JPMorgan/LabMorgan, where he led many successful internal BI initiatives, advising the bank's large enterprise software clients on enterprise adoption issues and product and marketing strategies. Prior to JPMorgan, Boris served as a senior manager of data warehousing and customer relationship management (CRM) practices at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Boris started his career at Citibank, where, among many other successful projects, he implemented the bank's first global credit risk data warehouse.

Education

Boris holds a degree in music education from Moscow Gnessin School Of Music, Russia.

Print Bio

Boris Evelson

Vice President, Principal Analyst Serving Application Development & Delivery Professionals

Read Boris's blog posts

Previous Work Experience

Education

Boris holds a degree in music education from Moscow Gnessin School Of Music, Russia.

Research Coverage

Boris Evelson's Research

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For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Data Warehouse Automation Platforms Help Close The Data-To-Insight Gap

Seven DWA Vendors Bring Agility To The Entire BI/Analytics Development Life Cycle

April 24, 2019Boris Evelson, Elizabeth Cullen

Self-service business intelligence (BI), analytics, and data preparation platforms only partially support Agile development of BI applications. Parts of the process, like data modeling, still follow a less flexible waterfall development life cycle. In this report, application development and delivery (AD&D) pros will learn about data warehouse automation (DWA) vendors that bring Agile options to all phases of BI/analytics application development. These platforms facilitate shorter development cycles and require fewer human resources with specialized data modeling skills. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy. We revised this edition to factor in new data and examples.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Now Tech: Enterprise BI Platforms, Q1 2019

Forrester's Overview Of 41 Enterprise Business Intelligence Platform Providers

March 26, 2019Boris Evelson

You can use enterprise business intelligence (BI) platforms to turn raw data into meaningful signals and then turn those signals into actionable insights to effect tangible business outcomes. But to realize these benefits, you'll first have to select from a diverse set of vendors that vary by size, functionality, geography, and vertical market focus. Application development and delivery (AD&D) pros should use this report to understand the value they can expect from an enterprise BI platform provider and to select one based on size and functionality.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Build An Agile BI Organization To Support An Insights-Driven Culture

Organization: The Business Intelligence Playbook

February 19, 2019Boris Evelson

An insights-driven organizational culture is key to enterprise success and competitive differentiation, and Agile business intelligence (BI) is a required foundational component to make it succeed. This report dives into the people part of the Agile BI tetrad — Agile BI software development, organizations, processes, and technologies. It provides an organizational framework that describes how application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals working on BI initiatives can align their BI organization for agility. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Optimize Your BI Strategy To Generate Maximum Business Value

Strategic Plan: The Business Intelligence Playbook

February 7, 2019Boris Evelson, Martha Bennett

Business intelligence (BI) is more important than ever in today's fast-changing competitive environment. Without effective BI, organizations lack an essential element in the application portfolio that helps them become insights-driven businesses. This report will help application development and delivery (AD&D) pros build a viable BI strategy that can adapt to business change and assimilate new technologies. We've updated the original playbook report for continued relevance and accuracy, including data from the Forrester Analytics Global Business Technographics® Data And Analytics Survey, 2018.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: The Forrester Tech Tide™: Enterprise Business Insights And Analytics, Q1 2019

Landscape: The Business Intelligence Playbook

January 14, 2019Boris Evelson

Turning raw data into actionable insights is increasingly critical to firms' ability to win, serve, and retain customers. To accelerate their journey to become insights driven, companies are evaluating and adopting a range of contributing solutions (technologies and professional services). This Forrester Tech Tide™ report presents an analysis of the maturity and business value of the 18 technology and solution categories that support creating and scaling business insights across the enterprise. Data and insights leaders should read this report to shape their firm's investment approach to these technologies.

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Topic Overview: Business Intelligence

November 21, 2008Boris Evelson

Business intelligence (BI) is a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information. It allows business users to make informed business decisions with real-time data that can put a company ahead of its competitors. Traditionally, core features like reporting and analytics have been the focus of BI technology choices, but as those features get commoditized, a whole new set of possibilities has emerged. Forrester's BI research shows that the technology is evolving and that enterprises on the cutting edge of these new trends can gain competitive advantage in their industries.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2008

July 31, 2008Boris Evelson

In Forrester's 151-criteria evaluation of enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform vendors, we found that IBM Cognos and SAP Business Objects maintain their leadership positions, while Oracle and SAS Institute move into leadership positions in enterprise BI thanks to the richness of their functionality, ability to scale, and the completeness of their corporate and product vision and strategy. Actuate, Information Builders, Microsoft, MicroStrategy, SAP, and a new entrant, TIBCO Spotfire, came out as Strong Performers following very closely on the heels of the Leaders, offering very respectable alternatives and a multitude of choices for information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals. New entrants to this Forrester Wave™ evaluation of enterprise BI platforms (though not new to the market) are Panorama Software and QlikTech, who, while lacking the breadth of features to qualify them as single, large-enterprise BI solutions, are reputable Contenders. In some very specific BI use cases, they even outperform the Leaders.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms, Q4 2010

IBM Cognos, SAP BusinessObjects, and Oracle Lead, With Information Builders, SAS, Microsoft, and MicroStrategy Close Behind

October 20, 2010Boris Evelson

In Forrester's 145-criteria evaluation of enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform vendors, we found that IBM Cognos, SAP BusinessObjects, Oracle, Information Builders , SAS, Microsoft, and MicroStrategy led the pack because of the completeness of not just BI, but overall information management functionality. Actuate came out as a Strong Performer on the heels of the Leaders offering equal — or in some cases superior — BI functionality, but it mostly relies on partners for the rest of its information management capabilities. TIBCO Spotfire also came out as a Strong Performer offering top choices for analytics, even surpassing other Strong Performers in the overall information management arena based on its traditional strength in middleware and application integration. Last but not least, QlikTech and Panorama Software moved up from Contenders and into the Strong Performers category based on the continuous improvements in their analytical capabilities.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Quantify The Tangible Business Value Of BI

Business Case: The Business Intelligence Playbook

January 10, 2018Boris Evelson, Martha Bennett

This report guides application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals working on business intelligence (BI) initiatives through the maze of BI business case categories and typical BI ROI components, and it identifies areas where quick wins are possible. This is an update of a previously published report; we revised this edition to factor in the latest findings from Forrester's Q4 2016 Global Business Intelligence Business Case Online Survey.
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

REPORT: Build An Agile BI Organization To Support An Insights-Driven Culture

Organization: The Business Intelligence Playbook

February 19, 2019Boris Evelson

An insights-driven organizational culture is key to enterprise success and competitive differentiation, and Agile business intelligence (BI) is a required foundational component to make it succeed. This report dives into the people part of the Agile BI tetrad — Agile BI software development, organizations, processes, and technologies. It provides an organizational framework that describes how application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals working on BI initiatives can align their BI organization for agility. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.